Analysts at Peel Hunt have reiterated their 'buy' rating and 524p price target on Faron Pharmaceuticals Limited (AIM:FARN, OTC:FPHAF) following recent Bexmarilimab therapy trial data news.
The City broker's analysts noted that Faron described the results from the melanoma cohort from the ongoing, adaptive, phase I/II MATINS (Macrophage Antibody To INhibit immune Suppression) trial for Bexmarilimab therapy, which will be presented at an academic conference in Scotland.
The analysts said: "We already knew that data was promising across all the indication areas (eg the recent top-line data on Bexmarilimab dose variation), and this news today is an incremental positive.
"The data presented today will show that Bexmarilimab has achieved a 100% overall survival at the 12-month point for PD-1 blockade refractory melanoma patients (ie those that do not respond to standard of care treatments – and this failure to respond to PD-1 based therapies occurs in 50-60% of advanced cases), for patients who experienced clinical benefit from Bexmarilimab (23% of the 22 subjects). This compares to just 11% (1 of 9 patients) alive after 12 months, where Bexmarilimab did not yield any clinical benefit to patients."
As a reminder, the analysts noted, the MATINS trial is investigating the safety and efficacy of Bexmarilimab as a monotherapy in 10 different hard-to-treat metastatic or inoperable solid-tumour patient groups.
They said: "Data to-date has shown that Bexmarilimab is well tolerated, even in patients that receive higher doses/frequency, and that treatment induced a significant increase (seven-fold in this instance in these melanoma patients) in systemic interferon (IFN) gamma. This shows that Bexmarilimab can activate a cancer patient’s immune response, especially those that have tumours that have completely escaped immune recognition (immunologically ‘cold’ tumours) where treatment is currently so difficult."
The analysts concluded: "We agree with the company that the data gathered so far on Bexmarilmab is very promising, suggesting that – alongside clean biomarker data – not only can Faron distinguish which patients will respond to Bexmarilmab treatment but that its use can ignite immunity in heavily pre-treated last-line cancer patients."
Faron Pharma shares were trading at 162.50p in late afternoon trading on Tuesday, up 1.6% on Monday's close.